Tom Venning (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the previous speaker's comments: vision is one thing, but actions are another thing. I rise today to address a matter of profound significance to the people of rural, regional and remote South Australia and indeed every Australian who lives, works or travels beyond the suburban fringes of our major cities. The Telecommunications Legislation Amendment (Universal Outdoor Mobile Obligation) Bill 2025 is a piece of legislation with a title that promises much but, as is so often the case with this government, carries a risk of delivering very little. The minister has repeatedly promised regional South Australians equivalent coverage. It's a lovely word, isn't it, 'equivalent'? It sounds reassuring in a briefing note or a departmental press release. But I invite the minister to come to Weetulta, Tarcowie, all of the Eyre Peninsula or even parts of Wallaroo and North Moonta.

I received an exciting letter from Minister Wells last week in relation to the Mobile Black Spot Program. Now, the electorate of Grey is vast and has a lot of industry—oil and gas in the north-east, mining throughout. Agriculture is the biggest industry. Port Lincoln has the biggest fishing fleet in the Southern Hemisphere. We have 28 councils. That's 28 CEOs and 28 mayors. So you'd think in an electorate which represents 92.3 per cent of South Australia—bigger than New South Wales—that we would have a lot of new mobile cell towers going in the electorate of Grey. One was announced in Grey—one. If I look at the nine years of the coalition government, 56 new towers were put in the electorate of Grey, and Minister Anika Wells can give us just the one. That is how much this Labor government cares about regional, rural and remote South Australia and their access to telecommunications—or lack thereof.

Let's tell the small-business owners, who are losing thousands of dollars because they can't process a payment or take an order, that their experience is equivalent to the speeds enjoyed in the city. The reality is that for people in regional SA connectivity is not a luxury; it is a fading pulse. This bill, while noble in its stated objective, needs to be dragged out into the light and interrogated. In 21st century Australia, reliable mobile phone coverage is not a lifestyle. It is not some consumer perk like getting a free coffee on a loyalty card or a discount on a streaming subscription. It is just as vital as the roads we drive on, the electricity grids that power our homes, and the water pipes that sustain our towns. It is the digital asphalt of the modern era, underpinning our social relationships, our economic activity and, most importantly, our safety.

For a grain producer on the Eyre Peninsula or a livestock farmer in the mid-north, reliable mobile coverage is like oxygen. For any Australian who hitches up a caravan or loads up a four-wheel drive to explore this magnificent country—a lot of them are in regional South Australia right now—mobile coverage is first and foremost a safety mechanism. It provides the essential reassurance that if the car breaks down, if a medical emergency strikes or if the weather turns dangerous, help can be called. In an inner-city suburb, a dropped call is an annoyance, a reason to grumble at the dinner table or send a frustrated text later on, but on a remote highway, hundreds of kilometres from the nearest town, a dropped call could be life or death.

Australia's geography makes connectivity more challenging than almost anywhere on Earth, but that very same geography makes it more vital. As we move through 2026, we see technologies emerging that offer exciting opportunities to bridge these gaps. We see the potential for direct-to-device satellite communication to finally put an end to silent zones that have plagued the bush for decades. But an opportunity is only as good as the framework that supports it. We need a system that delivers genuine reliability, not just political promises that fall apart the moment they are put to the test. The coalition supports the goal of extending voice and text coverage outdoors across more of the country, because we believe that improved connectivity for regional Australians is simply the fair thing to do. It is a matter of basic equity. Why should a citizen in Peterborough have a lower standard of safety and economic opportunity than a citizen in Melbourne or Brisbane?

However, the credibility of any reform rests not on what it aims to do but on the detail. It contains the realism of its implementation. That is why this bill must be deeply scrutinised. Any measure to improve connectivity must work in the paddock, in the truck cabin and on the shop floor. The legislative framework must genuinely expand coverage in a practical, reliable and affordable way. 'Obligation' is a very serious word in law, and it must be clearly defined so that carriers understand precisely what is expected of them and, more importantly, so consumers understand. Terms like 'reasonably available equitable access' are dangerous if they are left as broad, sweeping concepts open to interpretation. They must be translated into measurable, enforceable standards. Without clarity and a strong compliance framework, there is a risk that this obligation will be impossible to monitor and even harder to enforce. Australians deserve more than an ambitious headline; they deserve a framework that stands up under pressure and delivers tangible outcomes.

Let's talk about this emerging technology, particularly direct-to-device satellite technology. It represents an exciting development that could close longstanding coverage gaps, but we must be honest with the public. It is still a developing technology. This global rollout is still is still in its relatively early stages, and there are significant technical and commercial variables. For those at home, I want to expand on the direct-to-satellite technologies. Here in Australia and around the world we have Starlink, a constellation of low-Earth-orbit satellites. You can get great speeds with this technology today—I certainly have it on my vehicle when I'm driving around the countryside because, of course, I don't get mobile phone reception.

It is a powered antenna on the top of your car or on the top of your home, and it's a different technology than we're proposing for data and voice technologies. For the government to enable a universal mobile service obligation on data and voice—it cannot be done with the current constellation. What we're seeing now is companies like Amazon releasing more LEOs into the atmosphere for data and voice—and we're a long way away from that. You can consider it like a constellation of 5G mobile cell towers, which is very different to the constellation that Starlink has in our skies today. While we want to accelerate the rollout, we must recognise that legislating an outcome doesn't magically make the technology appear or work perfectly. Business builds and does things, not government. This test isn't whether the headline sounds good in a 6 pm news grab; it's whether the framework delivers for the people of Tarcowie or Streaky Bay.

The bill as it stands leaves so many questions unanswered. Domestic carriers may bear the primary regulatory burden, but they are going to be heavily dependent on international satellite-providing companies whose pricing models and deployment schedules are entirely outside Australia's direct control, like Starlink and Amazon. We must ensure that the new obligation strengthens competition rather than inadvertently handing the entire market over to one or two global giants. Telecommunications policy must anticipate these impacts rather than just reacting to them after damage is done and competition has been crushed.

What about device compatibility? This is a massive issue that the government seems to want to brush under the carpet. An outdoor coverage obligation is meaningless if the phone in the Australian's pocket cannot connect to this new service. Many of the handsets currently in circulation in my electorate were not designed with satellite connectivity in mind. Enabling that compatibility requires hardware and software capabilities that older devices simply do not possess. In regional Australia, people often hold on to their phones much longer than the tech-savvy crowd in the cities—sometimes because of financial necessity, but mostly because they just want a tool that works and they don't need those flashy features. A reform that only functions for someone carrying the latest high-end smartphone is not 'universal'. It is elitist and it is city-centric—but that is not new. It undermines the very principle of equitable access that this bill claims to advance.

Emergency triple zero access must never ever be contingent on owning a recently released, premium handset. We have already seen hard lessons on the government's failed management of the 3G network shutdown. That transition showed us that device compatibility cannot be treated as a secondary issue or left to chance; it is a core issue. We had three deaths in my electorate in recent times, and the coroner has stated that the lack of cell service reception had a 'significant impact'. Again, imagine if this happened in Adelaide. There would be absolute outcry—but not for us in regional, rural and remote South Australia. Again, as another example, when we had the Optus triple zero outage, there was a death in Gawler just outside my electorate because they could not contact triple zero. So whenever we discuss new obligations, we must look at them through the lens of this government's track record and, frankly, that record is appalling. The 3G shutdown was a foreseeable failure, and Minister Wells' handling of the triple zero failure was equally appalling.

The 3G shutdown was a planned change that required meticulous coordination between the carriers and manufacturers, the government and the emergency services. Instead, what did we get? We got a process characterised by confusion, the late identification of thousands of incompatible devices and completely inadequate communication to the public. Hundreds of device models were found to be incompatible, with many Australians only discovering this problem when their device suddenly stopped working. And this did not just affect mobile phones. Farms, farmers, fishers, miners, winemakers, those who work out in the elements have many IoT connected devices. We certainly do on our farm. Well, the cost to replace all of these antennas from 3G antennas to 4G antennas was significant thousands of dollars on our farm alone. This was another consequence of the failed 3G shutdown.

When it comes to mobile service, my constituents are paying what can only be described as a tax on their postcode. Because the 4G rollout wasn't finished before the 3G was unplugged, families have been forced to fork out thousands of dollars for Starlink set-ups or expensive boosters just to get the basic signal they used to have for free. This government treats connectivity as a data point on a spreadsheet, but, in the electorate of Grey, connectivity is the lifeblood of our communities.

Let me tell you about some of the people I represent. Craig, a farmer on the Eyre Peninsula, is trying to run a productive livestock business, but he told me he's basically had to give up on ordering transport to move loads of sheep because he simply cannot get a signal. My good friend Lucas Bagshaw, who faced every country person's absolute nightmare of a fire on his property, grabbed his phone to call for help, but there was nothing—no signal, no bars. He knew better than to rely on triple zero because, in regional South Australia right now, that's a roll of the dice. I think of an elderly primary producer in my electorate who recently crashed his quad bike. He lay there in the dirt for hours. He wasn't saved by a 4G network or a government safeguard; he was saved because he had an old radio and someone happened to hear his call for help on the good old UHF radio. I spoke with David, a senior, whose wife was forced to buy a new phone because her two-year-old Samsung, a perfectly good device, could no longer access triple zero after the shutdown. These are pensioners. They can't just nip out and drop two grand on a new phone.

Rebecca, from Streaky Bay, had been calling my office because, during a severe heatwave with fire warnings, the internet and mobile coverage for the whole town just dropped out for three days. Think about that: a heatwave, a fire threat and a total communications blackout. (Time expired)

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